Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid discharge device, a liquid discharge control method, and a non-transitory recording medium.
Description of the Related Art
Liquid discharge devices that discharge liquid on an object while conveying the object and operating a liquid discharge head that discharges the liquid in a reciprocating manner in a direction perpendicular to a conveyance direction of the object are known.
As liquid discharge devices, image-forming devices such as printers, facsimiles, copying devices, and multifunction peripheral of these are known. As the image-forming devices, image-forming devices of an inkjet type (inkjet recording device) are known. The image-forming devices of an inkjet type form an image (terms including recording, printing, printing photography, and printing letters also represent the same meaning) by causing ink (recording liquid) as the liquid to adhere to a recording medium (hereinafter also referred to as “paper” but this does not limit a material thereof) using a device including a liquid discharge head while conveying the recording medium.
In the inkjet recording medium, an image is formed by discharging ink with a carriage including the liquid discharge head (recording head) operated in a reciprocating manner in a main-scanning direction (hereinafter referred to as head moving direction) while a recording medium is sequentially conveyed in a sub-scanning direction (hereinafter referred to as paper conveyance direction). Such serial type inkjet recording devices are widely used mainly in households, SOHOs, stores, or the like.
Such serial type inkjet recording devices do not require a fixing mechanism and thus are relatively quiet and achieve a low cost with a small size as compared to electrophotographic image-forming devices. Leveraging these characteristics, the serial type inkjet recording devices are often installed in a relatively small space with people coming and going, such as households, SOHOs, stores, or the like. Therefore, suppressing noise accompanied by operation of the device is one of problems.
There are several reasons for occurrence of noise. Major reasons include conveyance of a recording medium. In the serial type inkjet recording device, usually a paper is fed from a paper-feeding tray by a conveyance mechanism and is caused to pause in an operation region of the liquid discharge head. In this state, the liquid discharge head is operated in the main-scanning direction in a reciprocating manner and thereby discharges ink on the paper to form an image.
Here, conveyance operation and pausing of the paper is repeated. In particular, when operation is accelerated or decelerated such as when a paper is pulled in, operation sound of the conveyance mechanism becomes loud, thereby causing unwanted noise.
The operation sound occurring upon acceleration or deceleration may be mitigated by reducing the conveyance speed of a paper; however, when the conveyance speed of a paper is reduced, a printing speed drops and thus productivity drops.
Meanwhile, proposed is a serial type inkjet recording device that forms an image in an oblique direction without halting conveyance of a paper even during printing by the liquid discharge head travelling in a reciprocating manner. This is called oblique printing. According to oblique printing, operation sound can be mitigated without reducing productivity as compared to the case of intermittent operation a paper as in the related art.